All of our maps are authentic antique maps, printed or drawn on or about the date shown in the description. In rare instances when we offer facsimiles, we will specifically describe the map as a later facsimile and include the date of publication. Certificates of Authenticity are available upon request. Simply mention your desire to receive one in the Notes section at checkout.

Map Maker

Fast, Global Shipping

Last year we shipped over 4,500 antique maps to more than 50 countries. Maps are shipped Monday through Friday year-round. If an order is received before 2 PM PST, we will ship the order that day. If an order is received after that time, we will ship the next day. We ship maps either flat in custom packages or in specially ordered thick tubes. Shipping rates are provided as part of the checkout process.

Description

Striking map of the Piedmont region, from Santa Margarita, Genoa and Monaco to Milan, centered on Turin, from a 1592 edition of Ortelius'
Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the first modern atlas of the world.

Nice old color example. Two cartouches and ship at sea.

Condition Description

Old Color. Minor discoloration at top right corner.

Reference

Van den Broeke 128.

Abraham Ortelius Biography

Abraham Ortelius is perhaps the best known and most frequently collected of all sixteenth-century mapmakers. Ortelius started his career as a map engraver. In 1547 he entered the Antwerp guild of St Luke as afsetter van Karten. His early career was as a business man, and most of his journeys before 1560 were for commercial purposes. In 1560, while traveling with Gerard Mercator to Trier, Lorraine, and Poitiers, he seems to have been attracted, largely by Mercator’s influence, towards a career as a scientific geographer. From that point forward, he devoted himself to the compilation his Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theatre of the World), which would become the first modern atlas.

In 1564 he completed his “mappemonde", an eight-sheet map of the world. The only extant copy of this great map is in the library of the University of Basle. Ortelius also published a map of Egypt in 1565, a plan of Brittenburg Castle on the coast of the Netherlands, and a map of Asia, prior to 1570.

On May 20, 1570, Ortelius’ Theatrum Orbis Terrarum first appeared in an edition of 53 maps. By the time of his death in 1598, a total of 25 editions were published including editions in Latin, Italian, German, French, and Dutch. Later editions would also be issued in Spanish and English by Ortelius’ successors, Vrients and Plantin, the former adding a number of maps to the atlas, the final edition of which was issued in 1612. Most of the maps in Ortelius Theatrum were drawn from the works of a number of other mapmakers from around the world; a list of 87 authors is given by Ortelius himself

In 1573, Ortelius published seventeen supplementary maps under the title of Additamentum Theatri Orbis Terrarum. In 1575 he was appointed geographer to the king of Spain, Philip II, on the recommendation of Arias Montanus, who vouched for his orthodoxy (his family, as early as 1535, had fallen under suspicion of Protestantism). In 1578 he laid the basis of a critical treatment of ancient geography with his Synonymia geographica (issued by the Plantin press at Antwerp and republished as Thesaurus geographicus in 1596). In 1584 he issued his Nomenclator Ptolemaicus, a Parergon (a series of maps illustrating ancient history, sacred and secular.) Late in life, he also aided Welser in his edition of the Peutinger Table in 1598.